Game Boy Advance: It's Finally Unveiled

Share.

At long last, the public has been shown Nintendo's next-generation handheld.

By IGN Staff

Today, Thursday, August 24, Nintendo unveiled its portable gaming platform for a new generation: GameBoy Advance. Members of the gaming press from every corner of the globe filed into their seats and eagerly awaited the world debut of Nintendo's 32-bit sequel to the 8-bit GameBoy and GameBoy Color. The presentation got underway as Mr. Atsushi Asada (Executive Vice President, NCL) greeted the crowd assembled before the main stage, and proceeded to outline Nintendo's present status. After explaining some of Nintendo's recent developments - most notably passing the 100,000,000 sold mark for GameBoy - Mr. Asada explained it was time to show us the new products we had come to see, and out of his suit pocket he produced the GameBoy Advance.

Announced Release Date: March 21, 2001 (July in the US).

Announced Retail Price: 9,800 yen (a little over US$91; expect similar pricing in the states).

Launch Software: 10 games.

As the flashbulbs flickered, press members in attendance were taken aback by the simple, straightforward design of the GBA, sporting its four action buttons (A, B, and L-R shoulders) plus miniscule select and start buttons seated below the tiny digital control pad. Mr. Asada (and later, Mr. Miyamoto) explained throughout today's presentation that NCL is committed to a "simple yet complete" strategy when it comes to the design and functionality of its next generation hardware. As he continued to talk about software, Mr. Asada announced that the GBA would be a dedicated high-quality two-dimensional game platform, bypassing any mistaken hopes for a 3-D system, and again stressed the idea of doing one task (2D GFX) particularly well as opposed to trying to do too many things.

Nintendo made public all of GBA's essential stats today. The GBA is based on a 32-bit RISC CPU processing unit (augmented with an 8-bit Complex Instruction Set Computing CPU running simultaneously, possibly used to simulate the GameBoy's Z-80 CPU when running original GB software). GBA features an attractive 2.9 inch (40.8mm x 61.2mm) reflective TFT color LCD screen, which NCL proudly announced is based on a newly created high contrast white panel screen. The TFT runs 240x160 pixels, with a maximum on-screen display of 32,000 colors. GBA's sound is PCM stereo, making use of the CPU for multiple tracks. Available memory stands at 32K WRAM and 96K VRAM within the CPU, and 256K of external WRAM. The GBA was designed to be C programming developer-friendly, and GBA game paks can range in size up to 256Mbits.

Gamers on the go will be pleased to learn that the GBA's battery mileage is decent: 15 hours on two AA batteries (or 10 hours with the optional rechargeable battery pack). The system is extremely light (140g) and has the capability to multi-link with up to three other GBA's using the GameBoy Advance Communication Cable. In addition, the communication port may also be used to connect the GBA to Nintendo's Gamecube, which instantly turns the GBA into a Gamecube controller with a color screen built-in (Mr. Miyamoto noted that this application would be perfect for multi-player software such as football games).

Due to the massive production schedule of GameBoy Color (with 1.5 million units produced monthly, increasing to over 2 million by year's end), Nintendo's release date for GBA was purposefully shelved well into next year so as to meet material demands for producing both systems.